Monthly Archives: March 2007

The phrase “the last mile is the longest” must have come from the publishing industry. The manuscript of my book on the facts and trends in digital media has been there at that 90% complete level for a while, and the last 10% is taking much longer time. The book is titled: “The Death of Mass Media”….describing how mainstream media will morph into a large aggregation of individual media publishers via blogs etc. More about it in the coming days.

I am thankful to all those who have given suggestions and pointed out assumptions which needed some more text behind them. The support from the team at BookSurge has been great.

So in the next few weeks, the book should finally go out for publication, and this the place where the feedback will arrive. I wanted the book to also have a blog along with it, so the discusion of all things – good and bad- will happen here. Lets be ready for many critics who will point out various flaws. But that’s okay and welcome. It gives one more chance to answer their doubts! Continue reading →

March 13, 2007: Viacom serves Google and YouTube with a $1 billion federal lawsuit for disregard of intellectual property laws. Viacom claims that over 150,000 clips of its content are on YouTube and have been watched 1.5 bn times.

What if many of these same people were also Viacom’s customers? Is Viacom also suing its customers for straying away? This debate was expected to happen anyway, and it has started off now.

The stakes are high, and in the ring are two of the top players from old media and new media, both with deep pockets and lots of resources, but only one of them has the support of its users. Google. But does that count at all? Well, it depends on the numbers who come forward to speak and the facts and arguments we present. Continue reading →

A study by Insight Express carried out for Advertising.com (the number one online advertiser) found that news and video streams were the most popular types of content for viewers.

News clips were favored by 48% respondents

Music videos were preferred by 47%

Movie trailers were next with 32%

While ads pay for some of the content that drove streaming growth last year, eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman believes that the market for streaming ads may have built in limits.

“The current video ad inventory shortages both create higher CPMs and hold back a fuller flourishing of this market”

Last year in June 2006 McKinsey & Co. reported that Internet video ads were 80% sold out in 2005! “Assuming that marketers don’t increase the number of ads they place in each video stream, the maximum supply of video ads is currently about $600 million a year – far less than future demand,” noted McKinsey & Co.

My conclusion is that those new media players, who can make the production of video ads easy, have an opportunity to exploit. Microsoft Movie Maker is the easiest so far. But there is a need for better-effect templates that can make video editing on microsoft platforms easy for the marketing teams of most non-tech savvy companies. And once that is done, the growing presence of established Internet video channels like www.Youtube.com and niche channels like www.MyOrbit.tv (for business) make it easier to reach large or focused audience.

About the author: Shankar AVSB is the CEO of MyOrbit and actively tracks the online new media markets and advises businesses on how to benefits from the new market developments.